IT’S tiresome to read letters such as that from JM Gowland (HAS, Oct 27) which start off with one argument and then jump to a self-contradiction.

He welcomed the BNP’s appearance on Question Time as “we still live in a country which allows freedom of speech”. But he then tells us that the Church “should keep out of politics”

because he doesn’t like something former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey said.

It reminds me of a poster my dad always kept on his study wall showing Bishop Desmond Tutu saying: “When people say religion should keep out of politics I wonder which Bible they have been reading.”

Make up your mind, Mr Gowland.

Which way is it?

John Armstrong, Bishop Auckland.

I AM puzzled by Lord Carey’s diatribe against the BNP (Echo, Oct 26). The position the BNP takes on immigration could just as well be attributed to rationality as it can to ignorance and malice.

It is when one looks also at its attitude towards the gay community that the suspicion of bigotry tends to be confirmed.

Yet this is essentially the same attitude as is taken by the Church of England and by most of the other religions that Lord Carey would have us respect.

John Riseley, Harrogate, North Yorkshire.